You see, if only the Founders hadn’t forged the Great Compromise between large states and small states at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, giving each state equal representation in the US Senate, they would have defeated Brett Kavanaugh handily. It’s only because smaller red states have two senators just like larger blue states that the judge got confirmed.
For the left, the US Senate is now looming, together with the Electoral College and the Supreme Court, as an institution of villainy in American life. In the words of Vox, the Senate is “a grotesquely unrepresentative body.” ThinkProgress deems it “an immoral, anti-democratic institution.” One reasonWashington Post columnist E.J. Dionne calls the ascension of Kavanugh to the high court a “coup” is that he was “confirmed by senators representing 44 percent of the population.”
Democrats have gone from bragging about their permanent majority a few years ago to complaining it’s impossible for them to win under the governing regime that we’ve had for more than 200 years, since it’s so tilted toward “minority rule.”
It’s certainly true that the Senate is not fully democratic and gives an outsized role to small states, since this was the price they exacted for signing on to the Constitution. This arrangement isn’t a conspiracy against the left.
Yes, Wyoming, population 560,000 in the 2010 census, cancels out California, population 37 million, with two Republican senators to the Golden State’s two Democrats. But Vermont, population 630,000, cancels out the two Republicans from Texas, population 25 million, with a Democrat and a socialist.
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The distribution of seats in the federal legislature was configured the way it was to prevent tyranny by a majority.
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